Hot Hot (Hot!) stuff happening like Steam controller changes, Last of Us on Valentines, Titanfall getting an alpha, Octodad release date rumors, Tetris on PS4, Star Wars 1313 getting dropped and Battlefront 3. Then we talk all about Nintendo's financial situation with Wii U and 3DS. Assassin's Creed IV and Spelunky are what we've been playing recently and that's all for this week.

As always the link is HERE due to no plugin made for MyIGN, but here's a picture of what you get (which if you click on also has the link)

We all know by now the details and general facts about Sony’s PS4 information explosion last Wednesday. They came out and blew me away with 2 hours of GAMES. At the beginning hardware and other non-gaming features were brought up, which were also exciting. However there was one thing that was not exciting. The Dualshock 4, now featuring a touchpad, different D-pad, different analog sticks, new L2/R2 triggers and a light! Color me unexcited.

Why?

PC gaming is already paving the way for the future of consoles is it not? Most of us can agree that digital only, always connected, capable of streaming, free to play, indie market, Steam-like community/hardware is where consoles are going can we not? However when you sit down at a desktop to play that MMO or FPS, what do you use? A keyboard and mouse. Majority-wise at least, most PC games are played with keyboard and mouse support. And if a gamepad it’s a gamepad that’s basically the Xbox 360 controller. And there’s nothing wrong with that. However Sony has made a mistake, Dualshock 3’s will not work with the PS4, instead you will be forced to use that monstrosity of a controller to play all PS4 games. Which opens up the avenue that Sony is going to try and force touchpad features for “innovative” and “unique” gameplay. All in all however it’s a gimmick.

Do you remebmer the Sixaxis? Of course you do, no rumble, and it had motion controls. Now, it’s 2013 and think back to 2012, how many games had Sixaxis motion controls? Journey… and… what else? And even if it did use it, was it so critical to the game that you couldn’t play it without it? No. Sixaxis was a gimmick, an uneeded and unwanted feature that just made the controller cost more. Sony also wanted to prove Sixaxis was capable of giving you “new” ways of controlling your game character in great games like Lair (remember that great game?), Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune (everyone likes tilting a controller to throw grenades!), Mirror’s Edge (using your controller to balance on a pipe is simply the BEST way to do it!), and Resistance: Fall of Man (cause using melee by clicking the thumbstick is so last-gen!). Of courset these games later revealed that the Sixaxis was forced and unneeded. Uncharted 2, no motion controls, Lair was patched to enable analog controls, and other games had alternative methods to the Sixaxis controls which were used probably 90% of the time. Sixaxis was a failure, and it was NOT NEEDED. Sure it was used “okay” in Infamous and LittleBigPlanet, but it brought nothing new to the table. Those games aren’t loved because it’s so cool to steer lighting with the controller, or how you can move the head and hips around in LBP.

We all loved parts like these right?

The touchpad is going to be the next Sixaxis for the PS4, it’s going to be something used by first party, and maybe some 3rd party games, but never will it be something you do that makes you want to go and grab someone and show them, “You can swipe to melee in Killzone! OMG!”. The touchpad isn’t needed, and it’s a feature that’s better left out. Everything costs money, it’s not like they’re putting that in there and it cost’s nothing. It’s adding to the cost of the controller (still unknown) and giving a dumb gimmick that in five years won’t be used in the games you play.

gimmicks

Next is that stupid God awful light. Which is designed to differentiate between players, as well as gameplay features used if the developer wants to. Again, on the Dualshock 3, there are numbers, you look at the number, you know what player you are. How hard is that to do? The light is also claimed to show your health. Now tell me this, you’re playing a console game, how often are you looking at the screen? All the time? You mean to tell me there’s also a HUD on there that shows your health? No way… That’s amazing. So I don’t need to have a controller flashing red in my dark room to tell me that I’m low on health? I would have never known…

Developers make games for various consoles, and they make games with the gamepad in mind. Now if they wanna make the most money, they’re not going to spend money programming their game so that the light will flash and interact with what’s happening in game, and they also won’t hash in touchpad stuff that isn’t going to be on the next Xbox, and certainly won’t be used on PC. So why? WHY? Why can’t you just let me use the Dualshock 3, or at least put out a controller that doesn’t have these stupid features and will cost less?

On a tangent, let’s look at Nintendo and the controllers they’ve used. With the Wii they debuted motion controls, ONLY motion controls. They wanted motion controls to become the major way you played games. Sure the Wii mote and nunchuck had buttons but they pushed motion controls as the biggest draw. Now of course, people who wanted to make games for the Wii would have to make drastic changes to the control set up if their game was also coming out on the PS3/X360 since the controllers were so radically different. And this translation did not go well, and 3rd party support for the Wii faltered and it mostly become an attraction for shovelware and 1st party Nintendo titles.

Motion gaming! Universally hailed!

With the Wii U they changed, they premiered the Gamepad with a new “innovationg” a touchpad on the controller. While the Wii mote and Nunchuck would be compatible with the Wii U, this was not what they were pushing, they were pushing basically a standard controller with a touch screen. They were saying subtley, “Yeah motion controls aren’t the future, it was a failed venture and we’re going back to standard controllers for our system.” They also put out on the side a controller without the screen that is very Xbox-ish in design.

Nintendo going back to the standard while also adding something new

Basically, Nintendo recognized a large majority of gamers like buttons and analog sticks and don’t want motion controls in every game they play. We like our controllers, and we don’t want that to change. Sony is trying to change things up, but not in an exciting way. Unfortunately for us this means 3rd party developers will put in dumb touch controls, the controller has more technolog driving the cost up more than without it and later on it’ll be abandoned in a majority of gaming but left in the controller because of past games that used it, like the Sixaxis.

Also there are people who hate on the L2/R2 triggers, however after playing on a PS3 for over 4 years, and also playing on an Xbox 360 frequently and now owning one, I can say I don’t care. The L2/R2 are fine. But there are a vocal group that hates it and wants the controller to be the 360 one but with a Sony label on it, despite playing PS2 games with a Dualshock 2 for years and years and never complaining. People can’t be satisfied with what we already have. The analog sticks and D-pad redesign are strange, since I don’t remember anyone really wanting those done again.

The controller everyones played with

Just my opinion, that the touchpad is dumb, the light is dumb, and Sony is dumb for wasting money on things 5 years from now we will look back on and think, “Why were we using the touchpad in games? Why did we think the light giving different colors was revolutionary?” It isn’t. And I’m just saying I’ll pay more money for a 3rd party Dualshock 3-like controller more than I’ll ever pay for that Dualshock 4.

Today was the day, the PS4 was revealed, and it was exciting, and games were shown, and it was undoubtedly next generation. This is a recap in my opinion and my thoughts on the reveal of the next generation of gaming.

Still ugly but I can get used to it

First off the controller, not my favorite design, the difference in the analog sticks as well as the touch pad placement are confusing and needless. We do not need a touch pad, nor a new d-pad. The Dualshock 3 is FINE, but of course they wanna introduce new standards, make more money and have innovative offerings. Whatever. The light on the top of the controller is one of the most confusing changes, a share button I understand, a headphone jack (for packaged in headsets) all make sense, a LED light to better differentiate between players? No thank you. The new PS Eye that’s now more Kinect than ever also appears to be a pack-in, bringing needless features and upping the price undoubtedly.

Gimmicks to drive the cost up

Next-gen graphics leading to better emotion means more touching stories

Tech demo’s are interesting, and Quantic Dream paving the way in facial animation and emotions is exciting, due to their previous work Heavy Rain. It is true that emotional tales are what make games great, having recently played Walking Dead and crying at the finale, I knew my connection to that game was more than games I’ve spent more time with but lacked emotionally attachment to. People always seemed to speak of “how can the graphics get any better” yet we consistently think that every generational leap, despite being wrong. If it’s true and the level of emotion and quality shown by Quantic Dream can be shown real time in any game, imagine what other fine details they can strengthen, bridging the gap between games and CGI masterpieces.

Developer friendly hardware means no more Skyrim debacles

Knack was the first game shown, and the most underwhelming. However it served as a good lead in to many great points Sony made. In 2008 the PS3 had been out for 2 years and developers were complaining about how hard it was to develop for it. So Sony already looked ahead and started to think of how the next PlayStation could be super easy for developers to work with, paving the way for them to be the base console, instead of how Xbox was this generation, that way they secure 3rd party support, and continue to own the exclusives market. This is awesome. They showed that they know we want games, and so they wanted to make it easy for developers to do what they want. They said, “Hey we’ll create this flexible system that you can totally do whatever you want with. Playstation 4!” And that’s what makes your console great. Netflix is fun, and having it as a Blu-ray player is nice, but my PS3 is there to play games, and Sony has the games, 1st and 3rd party.

Now people like me can experience clicking for 10 hours

Speaking of games, Diablo III is now confirmed on PS3/4. A major win I believe for Sony. Blizzard said they are in a partnership with Sony, permitted by Activision no doubt, to bring Diablo III to the console gamers. People like me who know about Diablo, are intrigued by it, but don’t have the money or time or know how to have a gaming PC for Diablo III. I’ve been very interested in Diablo III ever since it’s release, and before, it was just something I would think about from afar, “hey maybe one day I can play that game…” NO MORE! Thanks to Sony I can now play it on my PS3, or PS4 if I so choose, by this time next year it appears!

The most exciting aspect of the show

The most exciting thing however, for me, was when Sony consistently said they want to have the fastest gaming network. They talked about how wtih 8GB of unified memory they can now have downloads in the background, digital day one games will become simpler, firmware will be a thing of the past, social interaction and sharing is so integrated there’s a button for it on the controller.

Uglier XMB, why can't you just stay with the old interface?

Anyone with PSN knows how long downloads can be, and how we’ve become used to buying something and leaving the PS3 on overnight to download and install all of it as we sleep, but now, we can fulfill our impulses. Now we can see a game, click download, and while it downloads start playing it already. The developers also talked about wanting load times to be eliminated, to press the start button on the XMB and instantly be in the game. This is awesome, and backed by the 8GB of memory, trouble with big games like Skyrim will become a thing of the past. Now my firmware, game updates, and download times will be faster and done in the background. Another feature talked about was how you can now exit the game like you do on the Vita and go do other things and can jump right back into the game whenever you please. Which is something I am very happy to hear, as I very much enjoy that I can pause my Vita at any time, go onto twitter or the internet and go onto GameFAQs or tweet a recent screenshot I took of my progress in P4G. This adds onto the social factor they are going for.

At least the sticks aren't positioned like the Xbox

Another social factor is the share button I touched upon earlier. As it was rumored, you can press the share button at any time, tag/save gameplay and save or upload it instantly without having the leave the game. This opens up more opportunities than people think. Game capturing used to be something only for those who wanted to put the time, money, and effort into it. However now I can hypothetically do it all with my PS4, just play Uncharted 4 (unconfirmed) find some treasures, press share and upload the video of me showing the location to (most likely) my YouTube account (unfortunately I don’t think Tumblr will be linked in). Now more people can jump into guides and showing off humorous or talented sections of our games.

We've heard/seen it before, will it be different?

Something that NEEDS to be utilized is remote play. Vita is restricted right now with Remote Play with PS3, but Sony seems to want to remedy that thanks to Gaikai and the much more powerful PS4 system. As they stated, the PS3 came out in a transitional period, and it couldn’t keep up with everything happening. They couldn’t fully utilize remote play on the PSP, most likely for it’s lack of power, but now with the very powerful (and lovely) Vita, they hope to imitate the Wii U and gamepad, however with next generation games, and hopefully no gimmicks attached. The hope is that every PS4 game is capable of being streamed to that beautiful OLED screen. Meaning I can play Watch Dogs or Diablo III in the living room as my family watches Glee or, of course, as I take a number 2. The Vita has a wonderful screen, and dual analog sticks should make for easy adaptability to controller games. This is one reason I believe the touchpad has been implemented to the controller, to imitate the Vita’s touch screen interface (again, multi-touch, not one-touch like Wii U). This is also where Sony has the upper hand against Microsoft. Unless Microsoft somehow can make Halo controls work with touchscreens with the Smart Glass thing they have going, there is no way for them to imitate a remote play feature that the Wii U has and the PS4 hopefully has.

"Graphics cant get better" people should get their head out of their ass

Killzone: Shadow Fall is shown and is not as dark and dreary as other Killzone games. Instead it’s on Vekta again, where it all began, and this time in a skyscraper ridden city amidst shiny reflective glass and white foamed waterfalls. This is certainly not what you think when you think Killzone. The graphics are, however, up to par with what you have come to expect of Guerrilla Games, shiny, detailed, and pretty. It’s an FPS, with a seemingly minimized UI, a gun that acts as assault rifle and Sniper (which reminded me very much of Star Wars Republic Commando’s main weapon), climbing was shown, air assassination, and a slow-mo effect occured as well. The finale was underwhelming, hanging onto a rope off some flying APC and jumping off onto a small platform, but overall the demo impressed.

Shiner Killzone

What it did not make me do however was scream. Infamous: Second Son did though.

New Logo for a new generation of gaming?

Seeing the comic art style as a representative from Sucker Punch was on stage kept me guessing until they showed someone gaining powers, that’s when I knew it. Their new logo appeared, and Seattle was shown, different from the psuedo-real cities of Empire City and New Marais. It’s not about Cole anymore, and is instead 7 years after Infamous 2, which brings confusion as to which ending of Infamous 2 is canonical. Is Cole dead along with every other Conduit? Or is Cole still gathering Conduits, leading them on a revolution against the entire human population. Either way we have a new Infamous game, a series whose starting game I declared my favorite game this generation, and my favorite game of all time. His powers rely on smoke, so they say, which is pretty lame compared to Cole’s electric powers. He really appears more like Nix with his style of combat, disappearing and reappearing, red smoke fireballs. It was a very short trailer but looked so good.

Second Son's protagonist, what a douche

Cole's brother? Son? Kessler? What?

The creator of Braid came on to talk about a compact open world game, compared to an empty huge open world, that appears to be a explore and make the story your own. The narrative-less, yet still has a story theme to it has me intrigued. And it looks great too, though the puzzles shown confuse me, however he stated one of the themes if epiphany where you realize the solution in a sudden burst after a long time of being tricked. A game to keep tabs on for sure.

Indie game the movie

Media Molecule, while usually blowing us away with LittleBitPlanet, decided to just mess around with artsy stuff and show nothing really besides the potential, as well as bringing up that the PlayStation Move still exists. Moving on…

A puppet show was the intermission

Capcom came on and said it wasn’t Street Fighter, instead it was a Demon’s Souls inspired trailer of western medieval knights fighting a dragon in a realistic dark gritty dungeon of sorts. Social messaging for group play was also included.

Demon's Souls rip-off

Square Enix showed the same trailer they did awhile ago for their next-gen graphics (WHAT ARE YOU DOING?) and then a man came and spoke terrible English reportedly saying to be excited for E3 cause they’re going to talk about the next Final Fantasy game. If it’s not Versus, FFVII remake, or Tactics II I don’t care.

A game everyone's looking forward to

Watch Dogs was awesome. While some parts were confusing, especially the ending to the trailer, the gameplay looks so creative. I believe what was shown was a side mission of sorts, just something you can do if you so desire. Once again the game looks fantastic and is most likely optimized for next gen consoles, despite being released for current gen, and Wii U apparently. It looks better than GTAV honestly, and much deeper with the electronic world offering you the power to be a vigilante who is basically a tech god in that world. Very exciting stuff if they can pull it all together, which I believe they can. The only nervous part is when he looks at details on certain individuals, how many of them will be unique, and how many will be cut and paste copies. You can only have so many NPC’s usually, and I don’t know if they can take the time to creat unique backstories or details for a million people in a big city that you’ll be in.

Destiny, 90% concept, 10% game currently

Activision came out last to talk about a huge franchise coming to PS4, while at first I thought they would reveal the next Call of Duty for the first time, instead it was something better, Bungie a former Microsoft exclusive, showing up to tell people Destiny, a game many are excited for despite a lack of gameplay. Exclusive PS3/4 content was promised and more concept footage and “gameplay” was shown, though only non-combative. It’s clearly too early in production to have a good look at what it will play like, it’s definitely something to keep your eyes on.

That light is just stupid

3rd party support=games=money

Some minor things, Sony showed a picture of all the 3rd party support they will get, Bethesda, Rockstar, Level 5, Atlus, 2K and Arc System Works. These are all publishers/developers that know PS4 and X720 are where the future of gaming is at. Developers want to push the limits of games, and they have been hard at work on creating engines specifically for next generation consoles. One thing I forgot to touch on earlier, is that PSN profiles will remain the same, trophy level and friends list was shown, as well as an uglier XMB, and an Avatar that was a picture he uploaded of himself, meaning finally we can personalize our avatars as we see fit instead of choosing form free and not so free avatars off the store. Basically people can abuse this with pictures of their junk, or people like me can upload my Number 8 Axel pic and be satisfied with that. Simple touches that just make everything so sweet. I hope they allow me to disconnect though, or turn these features for social connection off. Even now with the minimal interference of PSN, I sometimes log off so I can just play a game and not worry about missing a message or being interrupted Used games and always online were not mentioned, and I doubt they well be at E3. They may not even be real features at all. Stop bitching Internet. The final thing Sony left for us was “Coming Holiday 2013”, basically meaning this is the year for next generation. Save up now, cause it’s going to be awesome.

New PSN profile page?

PlayStation 4 is real, and it’s going to be awesome and bring what people expected of next gen consoles.